Kraftwerk - K4 (1971)

By 1971 Kraftwerk had recorded three albums (four if you count the 1970 opus they recorded as 'Organisation') of electronic systems music, and had become one of the founding members of the new genre referred to as Krautrock. When Ralf Hütter took a sabbatical following 'Kraftwerk 1' – apparently to finish his college studies – Florian Schneider brought in drummer Klaus Dinger’s guitarist partner in Neu!, Michael Rother, and the result was a Neu! takeover. One of their concerts was recorded live for Radio Bremen, and these five tracks span over an hour of challenging electronic music, dominated by Dinger’s thunderous Sabbath drums and Rother’s white-hot guitar. Such freak-outery would not survive Hütter’s return, and so Dinger and Rother went back to Neu! and continued their own take on the genre, while Kraftwerk went down a more melodious route to become the commercially acceptable face of Krautrock. Although this could probably be classed more as Neu! with Florian Schneider loosely reworking some of Kraftwerk's early songs, rather than an actual Kraftwerk recording, it's still some of the best Krautrock of the period and deserves to be hear by fans of both bands.  

Track listing

01 Heavy Metal Kids
02 K1
03 K2 'Ruckzuck'
04 K3
05 K4